Why do we still refer to it as the M14E2 when it was officially adopted as the M14A1?

__________________"The gun has played a critical role in history. An invention which has been praised and denounced... served hero and villain alike... and carries with it moral responsibility. To understand the gun is to better understand history."

“What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.” - Alfred North Whitehead

Most of the grunts didn't even USE the name M14A1 because that name was only really used by logistics and that variant never really made into common use. Ater the M16A1 came out, folks didn't like calling the M14E2 the A1 because it was confusing at that point. They continued to call it the E2 because that was clearly the experimental version that they were fielding in the early war years.

I guarantee you, if you said M14A1 to most gun scholars or veterans, they'd go "huh?" Or think it was the Semi version (wrongly of course).

__________________The trouble is, one requires a specific thing to understand Liam, that thing being "serious head injuries." (Evil Tim 09-09-2011)

I don't buy it being confusing as a reason. Without going into an extensive list (though I can and will, if you want ), the same designation has often been applied to multiple different often unrelated pieces of equipment, be they weapons or whatever, used concurrently over the decades. For example, the M1 designation referred to a helmet, a rifle, a carbine, a simplified Thompson SMG variant, an 81mm mortar, a 57mm towed artillery piece, a 120mm anti-aircraft gun system, a flamethrower, a bazooka, and Athena knows what else. It wouldn't surprise me if the Army probably considered calling its members "M1 soldiers" at one point. Crap, looks like I went into that list after all. You're welcome. The practice continues even today, though not on as extensive a scale.

So I have a hard time believing that, in this one instance, any officials became confused between the M14A1 and M16A1 rifles.

There was also the M14 mine, the M14 grenade, the M16 and M16A1 mines, the M16 VADS, the M18 mine, the M18 grenade... Do I need to go on? Would you like me to go on? Being physically disabled means I tend to have a lot of free time.

__________________"The gun has played a critical role in history. An invention which has been praised and denounced... served hero and villain alike... and carries with it moral responsibility. To understand the gun is to better understand history."

“What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.” - Alfred North Whitehead